Andy Hornby, chief executive of health and beauty retailer Alliance Boots and the former boss of HBOS, said Britain is "not going to see consumer spending growth in the next two years".

He said that household budgets are under pressure from rising prices and taxes, as well as restricted wage growth.

"We have only just started the process of consumers reducing their debt," Mr Hornby told the Retail Week Conference in London.

Also warning of obstacles to recover was Richard Pennycook, finance director of supermarket Wm Morrison, who said consumer sentiment has deteriorated.

"It definitely feels to us as though there's another dip in consumer sentiment... and we can see that at the moment. We were surprised at how well Christmas went... and we expected things to head rapidly south again and that is what has happened," he told Reuters.

"They are looking at what they need to have, not what they want to have," he said.

Retailers have hit by falling trade. Earlier this month the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said that like-for-like sales - which strip out the effect of new space - fell by 0.4pc over February, while total sales rose by just 1.1pc. Excluding the date-related impact of Easter last year, this was the poorest monthly performance since May 2009.

Stephen Robertson, director-general of the BRC, said: "Apart from a bit of help from half-term for some retailers, February's sales were weak. Other than the negative figures last April (caused by the year-to-year movement of Easter), this February's 1.1pc total sales growth is the poorest since May 2009 – even poorer when the impact of the VAT rise on inflation is taken into account."

Retail chiefs have been lobbying the Treasury to help them at the Budget. They want red tape slashed, fuel prices cut and business rate rises to be reversed.

Sir Philip Green, the Topshop owner, said at the conference that he hoped there will be some help for consumers in next week's Budget.

In a broad-ranging talk, Sir Philip said that landlords will tend to accept company voluntary arrangements (CVAs) which see struggling businesses offer reduced terms on their debts as they are in their interests.

"Those are the rules of the jungle," he said.

The retail entrepreneur said that landlords are allowing CVAs to go through because they don't want "thousands of empty shops".

He said: "If every retailer in the room could pick the 100 or so stores they wanted to trade in there would be a hell of a lot of empty stores."

Sir Philip said that he would be supportive of some manufacturing returning to the UK, partly to offset rising costs in Asia.